Amazon.comGarry Wills--Latin scholar, liberal Catholic apologist, historian, award-winning Augustine biographer, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author--is certainly one of the best qualified translators in America to render Saint Augustine"s Confessiones for modern readers. With Saint Augustine"s Sin Wills offers the third and perhaps most crucial volume of the translation (following Saint Augustine"s Childhood and Saint Augustine"s Memory), and, with a small exception, his text remains lively, erudite, and contemporary while preserving the rhetorical games of the original.
As in the earlier volumes, the supporting apparatus for the translation--almost two thirds of the slim book--allows Wills to open the literary and theological complexity of Augustine to new readers. In the introduction he declares that Augustine"s titular sin is not sexual (as is often assumed), but, rather, is a gratuitous sin--a theft of pears committed with a group of young delinquents--akin to Adam’s sin of "compulsion to solidarity" with Eve. Wills buttresses his contention in the Appendix, "Augustine’s Theology of Sin." Here, he cites Augustine"s City of God at length to demonstrate the parallel language used in the narration of the fall.
Wills" other major goal in this translation, beyond positioning the work in its proper contexts, is to preserve Augustine’s Latin "rhetorical pyrotechnics." In doing so, he embraces word play and conjures Augustine’s Latin imagery into English equivalents. At one point, his decision to mirror Augustine"s use of a rare Latin verb leads to the opaque phrase, "I boldly foisoned into ramifying and umbrageous loves." But after this intended, intrusive lapse in clarity, the language of the pear theft itself melds perfectly Augustine"s philosophical and theological anguish. Wills" scholarly notes taken together with his rousing, vital translation insure that Augustine will be enjoyed by contemporary readers afresh both for his gifts asa writer and for the passion of his spirituality. --Patrick O"KelleyBook DescriptionAccording to Pulitzer Prize winner Garry Wills, most readers of Augustine interpret his meditation on sin in the Confessiones as an indication of his obsession with sex. But as Wills suggests in his discussion of book two of Augustine"s influential work, sexual transgression is not Augustine"s main focus as he reflects on the nature of human sinfulness. Instead, Augustine seeks to understand man"s power to transgress-how it is that good creatures can choose evil deeds. He describes his own shame after participating in a minor theft as a teenager and interprets this act-and all other acts of sin-in light of the three founding sins of the Bible: the fallen angels" rebellion, the temptation of Adam, and Cain"s fratricide.
With a brilliant introduction and notes throughout, this is a rewarding interpretation of a seminal work translated with new vividness and authority. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге Saint Augustine's Sin (Augustine, Confessiones. Bk. 3.) (Garry Wills)